Cardinal Flower and Sun by John Knight
By the time our son turned eleven, I figured he’d stop asking us sticky questions like “What’s Mono Gamus?”
“It’s not Mono Gamus,” I said. “It’s monogamus.” Then I was forced to explain.
After seeing a report that an asteroid was heading toward Earth and would arrive in thirty years, he asked, “Dad, will you still be here when the asteroid hits?” After seeing a TV commercial for a product that combs away gray hair, he asked, “Why don’t you use Just for Men?” Later I thought maybe Jesse just didn’t want me to become old. I was already fifty-eight.
The first question Jesse asked when my wife Shelley was planning to be away at a conference was, “Mom, when will you be back?” The second question was, “Dad, can I sleep with you while Mom’s away?” I usually said, “Yes, if you promise not to kick me in your sleep.” Even in our big bed, Jesse seemed to rotate and get his feet into my back. Jesse replied, “We can put a pillow between us. If I kick, I’ll just kick the pillow.” And with the idea of making it a perfect evening, Jesse added, “Can Maggie [the cairn terrier] sleep with us?” I thought sleeping close together was another of his ideas about love. A few years earlier, as I was putting him to bed one night, he gave me a long, hard hug. He said, "You like long hugs instead of short hugs because you get more love with long hugs." I felt tears come to my eyes. My parents never hugged me.
That spring, ants invaded our house, particularly the kitchen, which became something of a battlefield. One night in Jesse’s bedroom after the nightly story, Jesse asked, “Do you think there’s ever been an ant in my bed?” I said no. He said, “Do you think there are any ants upstairs?” I said, “No, they usually go where the food is. And that’s downstairs.” Jesse said, “Why did God make ants anyway?” I said, “I don’t know.” Jesse said, “I’m going to ask God that when I die.” When I was his age, I wanted to ask my Sunday School teacher if God could stop my alcoholic father from abusing my mother, but I talked to God only in silence.
That summer, Jesse found a small toad while gardening with Grandma Mary. Jesse said, “I’d like to keep this for a while and neuter it.” Grandma Mary said, “Why in the world would you want to do that?” Jesse said, “Actually, I don’t know what it means.” Grandma Mary said, “To neuter an animal means they have to do something to it so it won’t have any more babies.” Jesse asked no follow-up questions, which meant he wasn’t interested in that topic. When I was eleven, I was interested only in fishing for bass in our nearby lake and riding my bike three miles into town to play baseball with my friends in the field behind the firehouse.
Jesse’s school was now wired for the Internet, and so they send home a list of rules that students and parents had to read and sign. Jesse and I read the rules together. Jesse said, “What does pornographic mean?” I said, “It might be a website showing people without clothes on.” He said, “What does obscene mean?” I said, “It’s similar to pornographic, although it could mean dirty language too.” He said, “What does chat room mean?” I explained again. He nodded and signed his name. I nodded and signed my name. I was glad Jesse believed I was a safe person who could give him some answers. At his age, I was fearful of asking my own father anything about life.
Then the school sent home a notice that they’d be having a speaker and a video on sex education for 5th and 6th graders. Parents who didn’t want their child to participate could sign a slip and sent it back. We figured he was mature enough to participate. When the day arrived, Jesse came home and looked at Shelley as if he’d seen a ghost instead of a video. He asked her, “Why would anyone...if they’re not going to have kids?” Shelley asked about the video. Jesse said, “They were showing us things they shouldn’t have been showing us.” Apparently the movie was about changing bodies: breast development in girls, pubic hair, and so forth. When I got home, their discussion was still going. Jesse said, “Why do we have to know all this now?” Shelley said that some kids are sexually active at twelve and that some girls can have a baby at twelve. In a joking way, I said, “Guess I should have signed that form allowing you to be excused from Sex Ed class.” He said, “Don’t I wish!” After a moment, he added, “Well, at least I got something out of it.” He held up two samples of Zest deodorant body wash and a pamphlet picturing a tough football player over the caption, Craig “Iron Head” Heyward asks, “Is Body Wash for men?”
Jesse smelled good coming out of the shower that night, already carrying the aroma of the educated man he was soon to become.
Kurt Schmidt is the author of the novel, "Annapolis Misfit," (Crown Publishers) and chapbook memoir, "Birth of a Risk-Taker," (Bottlecap Press). As cancer survivor with PTSD, he overcame anxiety to fly in a small plane piloted by his newly-licensed son, who previously crashed a dirt bike and Mazda Miata at various race tracks and now races a Porsche and flies his own plane (hopefully crashing neither). Their flight story appeared in The Boston Globe and the Rock Salt Journal and can be viewed among thirty others at www.kurtgschmidt.com.